[Brownbag] Scott McDonald Talk, January 29

[Monique Verrier]

Dear Demography Community,

This talk by Scott McDonald at the Sociology Department may be of interest 
to you. Please see details in the email below and in the attached 
document.

Thank you,

Monique

Monique Verrier
Graduate Student Affairs Officer
University of California, Berkeley
tel: 510.642.9800  fax: 510.643.8558



---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Social Science Matrix <socialsciencematrix at berkeley.edu>
Date: Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 11:21 AM
Subject: Scott McDonald Talk
To: Rain Simar <rsimar at berkeley.edu>


SOCIAL SCIENCE MATRIX WELCOMES

SCOTT MC DONALD

Adjust Professor, Marketing
Columbia Business School
Former Senior Vice President, Research
Condé Nast Publications

"How Economic, Social, and Technological Forces are Re-Shaping Market
Research and the Applied Social Sciences"

Thursday, January 29, 2015
4 - 6pm
Matrix Conference Room, 820 Barrows Hall
Reception to Follow

The increasing availability of “digital footprints” – and
computational power to analyze them – are transforming the practice of
market research. Firms are shifting from asking their customers direct
questions to analyzing behavioral data that is collected passively.
This transformation has profound implications for the kinds of skills
required to conduct market research, for how research is organized,
and for the shape of future jobs in these fields.

Many of the changes observed in the field of market research apply
more generally to other branches of the social sciences. Increasingly,
social interactions can be observed directly at scale, instead of
being inferred from path analyses of individual level survey data.
This has moved network analysis from the fringe to the center of
contemporary sociology. Similarly, social scientists can measure and
track many behaviors directly, without resort to surveys asking
(however imperfectly) for people to recount their prior behavior.
Digital technologies also enable a wider deployment of field
experiments at lower cost and greater scale than heretofore was
possible. For both market research and for the social sciences in
general, these changes imply a shift in the kinds of skills to be
taught in graduate programs.

For more information, contact Social Science Matrix
socialsciencematrix at berkeley.edu or (510) 664-7087
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